There used to be an association between art and the ivory tower. Generic gallery space – the White Cube – seemed to give art a pristine and autonomous refuge from the clutter of commercialism. By the '90s, as the art world became part of the global economy, that cube became ubiquitous. This uniformity gave rise to a paradox: If art is supposed to be the language of individuality – of difference, even of freedom – why is it always displayed in a homogenous box, the world over?

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AVL/ARS 2003

Over the past 15 years, many artists attempted to break out of the White Cube. They began to exhibit in the world: apartments, hotels, restaurants, private homes, public buildings, city squares, and metro stations. Some opened their own galleries. City Racing in London and Glassbox in Paris established the artist-run space as synonymous with a new liberty, a critical stance against the limited way in which art is traditionally made and shown.

Others went further, abolishing the gallery altogether, and conceiving a system in which artwork and artmaking were one. In Thailand, Rirkrit Tiravanija's The Land is a collaborative, self-sustaining development in the village of Sanpatong. Prominent artists such as Arthur Meyere and the Danish group Superflex have contributed to it by designing toilet systems, solar power generators, and a methane production apparatus.

In the most radical instances, artists established entire territories. Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren have identified a parasitic country that is the conceptual aggregation of the world's no-man's-lands and border crossings. The inhabitants of Elgaland-Vargaland form a post-national scattered community that includes ambassadors and embassies designated by expensive plaques, and has its own language, official papers, and insignia. Its passport was so well made that it worked for crossing European borders – before 9/11, anyway.

AVL/ARS 2003

In 2001, Joep van Lieshout turned his Atelier van Lieshout – a design company that specialized in made-to-order furniture – into AVL-ville, a "state" with its own currency, laws, restaurant, workforce, abattoir, sausage factory, and ecological toilets. AVL is clearly the work of a single visionary exercising pervasive control over his state. The project aggressively asserts its autonomy, from its emphasis on borders and boundaries to its fascination with military paraphernalia and its apparent regimentation of daily life. As the diagram here suggests, AVL's artwork takes as its raw materials a series of interlocking systems of power, exchange, adjudication, and commerce. The work itself both resembles and reflects the obsessions of the surrounding nations, hence the obsession with defense and the establishment of social systems.

Whether playful, libertarian, or overtly flirtatious with danger, all of these examples confront us with a beyond-the-White-Cube dilemma: Art space may be the last refuge for the authoritarian imagination.